After a bitter fight both across the aisle between Republicans and Democrats and within the Republican caucus itself, the budget-buster $1.1 trillion funding deal barely passed out of the House on Thursday.
The bill, which has been dubbed by opponents as the ‘cromnibus’ spending bill, passed by a mere 13-vote margin and now moves on to the Senate where the bill is expected to pass ahead of the deadline to avoid another government shutdown.
The fight saw a rare case in which both Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi each were fending off internal divisions within their respective parties, reports The New York Times. Boehner scrambled in the last hours to rally support from Republicans after conservatives threatened to balk over ‘funding for amnesty’ among other contested provisions.
Meanwhile, Pelosi and a majority of Democrats publicly opposed the bill while President Obama and the White House undercut her by pressing House Democrat members to support the bill.
In the final hours, Boehner was able to cobble together a coalition of 162 Republicans and 57 Democrats to get the measure passed after Pelosi declared her members had the freedom to vote how they wanted.
Should the bill ultimately pass out of the Senate, the White House has already signaled it would not veto lest an eventual shutdown be blamed on Obama and the Democrats.
